EAUC attended the Environmental Audit Committee inquiry into Green Jobs

On 3rd March (2021), Iain Patton, CEO at EAUC was invited alongside representatives from Education and Training Foundation (ETF), Students Organising for Sustainability (SOS-UK), Leicester City Council and Greener Jobs Alliance to look at how green jobs can help tackle the expected rise in unemployment due to COVID-19 in a sustainable way. The meeting also looked at the jobs, skills and training needed to achieve the UK’s longer-term climate and environmental ambitions and what planning and work is taking place to meet these requirements.

EAUC believes now is a great opportunity for colleges and universities to innovate and blur these boundaries and to stop the insular thinking of vocational versus academic. In light of this, EAUC has have made the following recommendations:

• That Climate Skills Action Plans should be mandated for all universities and colleges to complete. This would signal the Governments prioritisation to skills and net zero and help institutions identify where they need to fill climate skills gaps in their curricula and staff training. Skills Development Scotland have done this on a national scale to create pathways to upskilling every sector to help employers and skills providers ensure they meet the skills needed as each sector advances towards net zero.
• We can recover from the pandemic and address the climate crisis in the same action by aligning skills with economic regeneration.
• Update and develop new qualifications to encourage retraining and lifelong learning through a joined up approach between private sector and government. This could increase the availability of short-term retraining courses, with clear pathways into employment as an incentive for workers.
• Bring back mandatory carbon reporting for universities in England to boost carbon literacy and increase awareness of the issue across the university, by giving the Office for Students the mandate to do so.

In January 2021 we released the EAUC response to the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) on Green Skills and are confident that some of the recommendations listed then are now being considered further, such as the early considerations of the establishment of a National Skills Commission to encourage the coordination of different government departments and work with businesses, local institutions.

The recording of the EAC inquiry into Green Jobs can be accessed here.
Access the range of EAUC consultation responses here.